Pages

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

This Cucumber and Radish Salad with Feta, Red Wine Vinegar, and Buttermilk Dressing is easy but delicious!

If you saw the garden update where I picked all those radishes, you might not be too surprised to see this Cucumber and Radish Salad with Feta, Red Wine Vinegar, and Buttermilk Dressing popping up here. I love radishes, especially the mild ones you get from the garden, and I've had fun trying recipes with them through the years. It took a bit of experimenting to get this recipe just right; feedback from recipe testers on the first two attempts asked for smaller pieces, more feta, and less vinegar flavor in the vinaigrette, and I thought those changes made the salad better. I used small, crisp Persian cucumbers in the final version to make the radishes and cucumbers both equally crunchy in the salad. Garden cucumbers would also be good here, but I wouldn't use large watery cucumbers with a lot of seeds. The Persian cucumbers didn't need to be salted to draw out water, and that kept the leftover salad good in a fridge for a day, so they were a perfect choice to make this.

Cut four Persian cucumbers in half lengthwise, then into half-moon slices about 1/2 inch thick. I didn't peel the Persian cucumbers, but if you don't have this thin-skinned type of cucumber, you might want to peel some strips of skin off.

Trim stem and root ends of radishes and wash, then cut radishes in half lengthwise and cut into slices just slightly thinner than the cucumber pieces.

Cut ends off cucumbers, cut in half lengthwise, then cut into half-moon slices about 1/4 inch thick. Wash radishes and trim ends, then cut in half lengthwise and cut into half-moon slices just slightly thinner than cucumbers. Put cucumbers and radishes into salad bowl.

Put 1/2 cup crumbled feta into a bowl or measuring cup. Add chopped fresh thyme and red wine vinegar and mash slightly with a fork. (I agreed with David that it was nice to leave it a little chunky.) Stir in olive oil and buttermilk (or use regular milk or water if you prefer.)

Stir the dressing into the salad. Season to taste with salt and fresh ground black pepper (I didn't use much salt.) Serve with the extra 1/4 cup crumbled feta sprinkled over the salad.

This will keep in the fridge for a day or two, but it's better freshly made.

I chose the South Beach Diet to manage my weight using The Glycemic Index
partly so I wouldn't have to count calories, carbs, points, or fat
grams, but if you want nutritional information for a recipe, I recommend
entering the recipe into Calorie Count, which will calculate it for you.

Posts
may include links to my affiliate account at Amazon.com, and Kalyn's
Kitchen earns a few cents on the dollar if readers purchase the items I
recommend, so thanks for supporting my blog when you shop at Amazon!

Posts may include links to my affiliate account at Amazon.com, and this blog earns a few cents on the dollar if readers purchase the items I recommend, so thanks for supporting my blog when you shop at Amazon!

I love radishes - the only ones I had last summer were a fat bunch that a farmer pulled out of the ground for me in Upstate NY. Those tasted particularly good, given the circumstances, as I'm sure the ones from your garden do.

One will never run out of great salad recipes with your blog, Kalyn! This one looks great, too. I'm ready to try radishes again. I've never had mild radishes actually. They always seemed pretty potent to me, but maybe I haven't been exposed to the right ones yet. Love all the colors in this salad. It's the right time of year for everything cucumber. :-) I just made "bruschetta" using cucumber. :-)

The colors in the finished salad are really lovely. You've given me food for thought. I have no recipes for radishes in my files. This recipe is a great place to start. I hope you are having a wonderful day, Kalyn. Blessings...Mary

I'm an addict of Feta cheese cold salad recipes. Keep the radishes for at least a day in cold water in the frig to make them crisp. To any red wine vinegar + XV olive oil dressing ... puhleeze add 1/8 tsp of Coleman's yellow dry mustard per cruet. Too much is bitter, too little is missing 'the secret'. I've got the radishes... I'm heading out tomorrow for the cucumbers to try this.

Thanks for joining the conversation! I love hearing from readers and even though I can't always reply to every comment, I will always answer specific questions on a recipe as soon as possible. Sometimes I'm answering by iPhone, so my replies may be short!

Comments don't appear on the blog until they're approved by me, so no need to try again if you don't see it when you post the comment! Please make your signature a link to your site if you're a blogger, but other links posted within the body of the comment will never be published.

Food Blogger Love!

Copyright Notice

All Photos and Original Text (C) Copyright: 2005-2015, By Kalyn's Kitchen® LLC. I grant permission for photos and recipe links to be copied to social media and other sites, but not recipe text. All Other Rights Reserved. (Other bloggers may post their adapted version of any recipe found here, with their own photos and recipe text, but please link back to the original inspiring recipe on this site.)

Kalyn's Kitchen is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.